Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq on Tuesday instructed that further payment to the contractor in charge of the Kwara State College of Education Road in Ilorin be discontinued, pending the discovery of the exact shortage to the public in tandem with an audit report which exposed the gaps between the work done and what was ratified.
AbdulRazaq hinted that the contractor might make refunds to the government if the level of job done doesn’t not commensurate with the balance of the amount of job yet to be done.
In a virtual deliberation in July with the Elite Network for Sustainable Development (ENETSUD), the governor put forth social audit to enable civic groups and enjoined communities to trail government’s projects to foster accountability.
ENETSUD Deputy Coordinator Comrade Aliu Mashood apprised the governor that the social audit contradicts BEME and the variation of job done in respect to BEME record, especially the length and the breadth of the road, amounting to N16.6m.
He, however, noted that the length of the road in the BEME was 800metres as the actual length on site was 696m, although ministry officials revealed that the exact length on site is 700 metres.
Mashood advised the government to prevail on the contractor to add an additional 1 cm to its thickness and to refund the shortfall for the job not done.
Upon demand to highlight the distinctions observed, the project manager for the contractor Dotmic Options Limited Babatunde Akorede advanced that the length in the BEME not in line with what was on site.
He further stated that the shortfalls were covered in some extra jobs already carried out such as 132 metres of drainage as against the 100metres in the BEME, removal of unsuitable and replacement with good lateritic materials, and plastering of the drainage.
He also said he constructed a box culvert in front of the Government Day Secondary School, Odo Ogun and the discharge drain of 250metres to Odo Ogun, which he said were not in the BEME.
In his response, the Governor said that the contractor may have done extra work as he argued, it was obvious that the differences noticed in the length in the BEME and the actual length on site were valid. He said the variations not captured in the BEME ought to have been brought for a separate approval.
“With what I see here the resident engineer did not do his job. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul. If the road is 800m and you find that it is 700m, the amount that is left over should be refunded. The ministry should have come to seek variation approval for additional work that you are doing. That is what transparency is. You can’t say you have excess money from here and put it there, it doesn’t work that way. That is where the issue is,” AbdulRazaq said.
